Reviewed here:

• Love Comes Lately
• The Walker
• Callas Assoluta

Love Comes Lately, by Jan Schütte ***

Adapted by the director from three short stories — The Briefcase, Alone and Old Love — by Isaac Beshevis Singer.

Now and then at the film festival, I will bump into a wonderful unheralded film.  Nobody has hyped it in the press, and something tells me it will find its way directly to cable and the art house market.  A small film, but a touching one.

Otto Tausig, an 85-year old Austrian actor, plays Max Kohn, a Viennese émigre long resident in New York City.  Max is a writer who still uses a typewriter.  Episodes from his stories show up in his dreams and vie for his attention interleaving unexpectedly.  His alter egos all worry about virility and attractiveness, even though they sense that women are drawn to them.  In this wonderful confusion, Max’ housemate and girlfriend of many years, Reisele (Rhea Perlman) is jealous of his supposed girlfriends.

Max has been invited to deliver lectures in New England, but on the train, he drifts off and the action moves to Florida and the story Alone.  Max, now Simon Danziger, is beset by the cleaning lady, Esperanza (Elizabeth Pena), at an otherwise empty motel, and a voluptuous widow Rachael Meyerowitz (Caroline Aaron).  

After his first lecture, Max winds up in the arms of a former student, Rosalie Kaddish (Barbara Hershey).  The next day, he’s off to his next stop, but loses his briefcase enroute including the name of his hotel.  Arriving late at night, he finds himself in a dump across from the railway station.  Eventually, his hosts rescue him, but he has lost his notes, and, instead, reads a new story, Old Love.  This actually takes us into a short film made by Jan Schütte in 2001 with Tausig as a widower Harry and Tovah Feldshuh as his recently widowed neighbour Ethel.

The beauty of this film is the interweaving of plots and the transitions between Max’ real life and his stories.  Max and his assorted characters are wonderful roles for Otto Tausig, and Love Comes Lately is a great addition to the string of movies from this festival with senior actors.

The Walker, written and directed by Paul Schrader **

On the surface, The Walker sounded like one of those gala films worth seeing on the repeat based, if nothing else, on the cast and the premise.

Woody Harrelson plays Carter Page III, a gay man working as a “walker”, a man to accompany wives of the powerful in Washington, D.C., when their husbands are otherwise engaged.  Page ingratiates himself with the ladies, a trio of Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin and Kristin Scott Thomas, and their weekly bridge games are full of light chatter and gossip.

Page mistakenly feels he is part of their circle, but when one woman’s lover is killed, Page finds himself on the outside, accused of the murder.  His day job as a real estate agent really depended on his contacts, and without them, his job is finished.

Here the plot comes unglued.  The Walker succeeds only when it is a comedy of manners with the ironic and convenient presence of an openly gay man in the middle of the ever-so-straight establishment.  As a mystery, it is a poor melodrama. 

Great actors, great first half.

The Virgin Spring, by Ingmar Bergman

I have no intention of reviewing this masterpiece, but wanted to mention one of the great moments of the film festival.

Each year, a few screenings appear as a retrospective with introductions either by people connected to the films, or who cite them as important films by others affecting their own careers.

Max von Sydow introduced The Virgin Spring which, together with The Seventh Seal, established him as a major actor and part of Bergman’s cinematic rep company for years to come.  After the screening came a generous interview.  Listening to von Sydow reminisce about Bergman, to whom he still refers deferentially, was a treat.

In one of those “if only” moments during the Q&A, someone asked whether von Sydow had ever played Lear.  He replied that “Mister Bergman” had done a production of Lear at the National Theatre in Stockholm, but with another actor.  Later, he confided that he would like to have done it with von Sydow who feels, alas, that he is now too old to take on such a role.

Callas Assoluta, written and directed by Philippe Kohly *

This “mesmerizing documentary … a survey of Callas’s entire life” according to the program guide is instead a bitchy assault on Maria Callas’ love life and her background as a girl from a poor Greek-American family.

The film begins at the end, with the love affair between Callas and Aristotle Onassis.  Clearly, director Kohly’s thesis is that Callas’ life and talent were barely her own, that she was impossible to work with, and that without a series of men she would be nobody.

What is particularly striking is the flat tone of the narration by someone who has no involvement in the text.  Maybe they thought as little of the film as I did, but needed the money.

The music is lovely, but you can get it all on CDs without sitting through this so-called documentary.